


Anywhere But Where We Are

by freneticfloetry



Category: Marvel Ultimates, Spider-Man (Ultimateverse)
Genre: F/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 05:44:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/pseuds/freneticfloetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’ve always been in different places. Maybe one day they'll meet in the middle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anywhere But Where We Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



> So um... this happened. Spoilers through Ultimate Comics Spider-Man Vol. 2 #16, the entire Ultimates run, Ultimate Comics Fallout, and Ultimate Comics Ultimates #16, though I've taken liberal creative license with Steve's backstory (namely Ult-verse: The Jan Years). No clue if this actually works, but it was an interesting experiment nonetheless (why yes, Steve/Maria _can_ happen entirely within comicsverse! With a lot of handwaving, that is.), and I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Structure loosely-based on "The Last Five Years," title taken from "Aida." So apparently it's Marvel the musical. :)

 

######  _9.27.2012_

Maria flips the file closed and flicks off the lamp at the edge of her desk, standing up to stretch in the deserted darkness of Homicide Division.

Everyone's cleared out but Dispatch downstairs, and even the Chief has already called it quits, but something about this case just doesn't sit right. Could be that it's the first one in a while that's actually kept her up at night — which should be sad, with everything that's going on out there — but maybe it means she's seen enough to detach from most of the madness, if not decompress.

Aaron Davis. Christ, what a mess.

 _Something_ stirs in the air, the friction of another body slipping through the space, and she tenses, weight shifting to her toes, hand moving to her holster.

"Easy there, quick draw," the something says, "I come in peace."

Her hand falls away and her heels find the ground, but the tension simply changes its shape.

Not an intruder. Just a ghost.

"Figured I'd find you here." The ghost flips a switch on Donovan's desk and gets caught up in the glow, and there he is — the stars, the stripes, the phantom bars on his shoulder.

It's been awhile, but he looks exactly the same. She, however, is fairly sure she that looks as tired as she feels, that every year gone by and bust gone bad is etched into her face. Lucky for her, it's only a task lamp.

She shrugs. "It's a late night."

His eyes find the caged clock on the wall. "It's an early morning."

"Semantics," she says. "Turns out it only takes the impending death of a nation to get approved for overtime." She props a hip on the desk and crosses her arms over her chest. "Is there something I can do for you, Captain?"

His wince may not be as pronounced as the little pool of light makes it look, but she would've noticed, anyway.

"I'm sorry," she amends, and it sounds anything but, even to her own ears. " _Mr. President._ "

 

 

 

######  _5.24.2002_

When General Fury had mentioned that he'd have a new detail for the day, he'd envisioned more guys with guns. Frankly, after a week in the future under Fury's watchful eye, the thought had been a relief.

He'd been expecting a changing of the guard. He just hadn't been expecting _her_.

Steve's been awake long enough to know that times have changed where women are concerned. But the woman waiting outside his quarters is something else entirely — swathed in a skin-skimming jumpsuit, the sidearm hitched on her hip hidden by a black leather jacket. Her hair is cut shorter than he's ever seen, and her eyes are sharp and shrewd and _strikingly_ blue.

"Ma'am." He nods, clearing his throat to cover his surprise. "Morning."

"Afternoon," she says, stretching out a hand. Evidently he'd locked himself away with the files Fury had left for longer than he thought. "Agent Hill, sir. I'll be your S.H.I.E.L.D. liaison for the offsite today."

Steve snorts before he can stop himself. "That's a pretty diplomatic way to put it." Her grip is solid and sure, even by super soldier standards. "Shall we?"

There's a driver waiting outside his derelict building, and Steve steps off the curb and off to one side. "After you, ma'am."

She neither moves nor responds, but the look she gives him has probably leveled lesser men. As it is, he's feeling a little fidgety. He ducks into the back seat, she slides in behind him, and silence settles in the cabin as the sedan pulls away.

"I'm outranked here, Captain," she says, breaking the quiet after a few blocks. "The 'ma'am' isn't necessary."

"Right. Right." One more thing that will take some getting used to. It's a struggle not to cringe — god, his mother would kill him. "What's your name?"

"Hill, sir? I believe I mentioned it before."

His polite smile pulls uncomfortably. "Now that I think about it, it does ring a bell. Does that come with a first name?"

She turns away from the tinted window to throw the tight smile right back. "Lieutenant."

He coughs into his fist, oddly intrigued. It's the most normal thing he's felt since he'd come to on that gurney, and he's trying like hell not to grin. "Then I'll stick with Hill, if it's all the same to you. 'Lieutenant' is a bit of a mouthful." Pulling in a breath, he looks down at his hands. "Sorry you're stuck on babysitting duty, Hill. I'm sure you have better things to do than help me shop for the twenty-first century."

"I don't know, sir." Her face is carefully blank when his eyes come back up, but her voice is an impossible mix of insight and irony and flat-out lack of interest. "Captain America was a national treasure, once upon a time. Most agents would consider this assignment an honor."

Steve shakes his head. He'd been a lot of things, once upon a time. "Trust me, it's not."

He's so caught up in relief at the realization that she won't be gaping at him like a sideshow act that he almost misses the moment when something in her smile goes genuine. Then she turns to the window again, watching the world go by.

"Didn't seem that way to me, either," she says. "Go figure."

 

 

 

######  _8.17.2011_

The beep of the intercom hits her right between the eyes, and she slaps out a hand and buzzes the building's front entrance just to make it stop. She swallows two Tylenol dry and swings open the door, but it's not her Chinese waiting on the other side, it's Captain America.

Which is not entirely accurate. She'd last seen Captain America from the frame of her tiny TV, in full service uniform, striding away from Spider-Man's funeral. The man at her door is Steve Rogers, plainclothes, with a dark duffle slung over his shoulder.

"Can I come in?"

She steps aside as an answer and he moves through the door, swallowing all the space in her studio.

"Nice place." His voice is flat in a way she's never heard from him, but then, it's been a long time since she's heard it at all. "I'm pretty sure letting people in when you don't know who they are tends to defeat the purpose of a security system, but it's a nice place."

"I'm still the best security system I've got." She shuts the door and shrugs out of her jacket, and his eyes fall to the service weapon that's still strapped to her side. "Though I hadn't planned on having to defend myself against my dinner delivery. What are you doing here?"

"You're a detective," he says, eyes on her shield now. "Wow, that's… Congratulations."

Her hand comes up to rub at her temple. That Tylenol just isn't going to cut it. "I made detective two years ago. Meant to mail out some shiny announcement, but I guess I got distracted by all the murder. Why are you _here_?"

"I killed Peter Parker."

Half of her reacts instinctually to the confession, itching to reach for her gun like the cop she is. The half that remembers who he is, and who she used to be, makes her pause. "Since we've already established that I'm a homicide detective, you need to be careful about saying things like that to me."

His bag falls to the floor, and he starts to pace the small stripe of open space between the windows and the back wall.

"He was my responsibility. He was my responsibility, and he was out there, untrained, because I didn't think he was ready. Because I fell down on the job. He was just a _kid_ , Maria. Not even old enough to drink, barely old enough to drive."

"I worked a drive-by last month that took out two toddlers." Maria shakes her head. "Bullets hit who they hit, doesn't matter how old. I see it every day."

"That bullet should have hit _me_." She sucks in a sharp breath, and he pulls up short, sitting heavily on the edge of the mattress. "After I told him he wasn't ready to be a hero, that he hadn't _earned it_ , he took a bullet that was meant for me."

"Then he saved your life, and proved you wrong," she says. "Doesn't mean you pulled the trigger."

"I may as well have. That kid is dead because of me."

"That kid is dead because he made a _choice_. It's not _about_ you." She stops, takes a step back in every way she can. "Look, it is a damn shame that Peter Parker is dead. But Spider-Man knew the deal going in. He chose to step in front of that bullet, just like he chose to suit up and save whatever corner of the world he could. And none of this should be news to you, it's what you do every day. You're Captain America, for chrissakes."

His smile is soft and sad, so familiar that she aches a little.

"That's just it," he says. "I'm not."

Something skips in her chest, bracing and cold, creeping through her veins like ice. She clenches her fists, trying to clamp down on each frozen tendril — the confusion, the frustration, the denial and disbelief and _anger_ — before it can shake from her fingertips.

"What?"

His jaw works around the words before he says them. "I've tendered my resignation with Fury. I'm not Captain America, not anymore. I don't deserve to be."

She blinks, shaking her head, snorting all the breath from her lungs. "You've gotta be kidding me." He actually shakes his head, as if he'd taken the statement literally, and the snort becomes a bitter laugh. "Well that's great. We're trying to fight terrorists and fix states that are no longer united. But if a cryogenic war hero with superhuman abilities thinks he doesn't _deserve_ to be Captain America, then I guess this country is pretty much fucked."

He winces. She ignores it. "So holing up in your apartment feeling sorry for yourself is going from hobby to fulltime occupation."

"No. No, I…" He trails off, looking down at his hands, and she raises an eyebrow.

"My mistake." She spreads her hands. "Any other special plans for retirement? Weekly tee time? Some shuffleboard in the park? I'm just dying to know what you'll be doing with your life while the rest of the world goes to hell."

"I was thinking Alaska," he says, softly. It still feels like a slap in the face. "I'm _leaving_ , Maria."

The bag makes sense now. His sudden appearance makes more. It's surprising, how much it stings. She doesn't flinch, but all at once it's all too much — her headache, his heavy voice. Having him here, in her apartment, on her bed, smiling that same sad smile she thought she'd seen the last of.

 _Alaska_. Back to being frozen, as far away as he can get without actually leaving the States.

"Yeah," she says, reaching behind to feel for the knob, "you are."

He puts his hands on his knees and pushes himself to his feet, swinging the strap of his bag back to his shoulder. "I wanted to tell you in person. To say goodbye."

"We already did that." She swings the door open at her back, steps aside so he can get past without contact. "But hey, mission accomplished."

When he moves, it's only halfway through the door. Then he turns in the threshold. "This is still home. I mean, it's New York. I don't think I _could_ leave for good." His eyes are insistent, imploring, two points of cloudy blue that have come far too close. "But it's not… I can't be here right now, Maria."

"And yet you felt the need to drop by and explain yourself."

"That's not…" He drags a hand down his face, like it'll wipe away what this is, what it means, what he clearly wants from her. "I just want to do the right thing here."

"No, you want to do the easy thing. You want to _feel_ better."

She barks it back, because it needs to be said. Because he should know this by now. Because she'd let him in once, knowing exactly who he was, and it hurts like hell to lock him out again. But she shoves at the door anyway, until the bottom hits his boot, and he shuffles backward while she shakes her head through the sliver of space that's left.

"You want someone to tell you that it's okay not to do your _job_." The bark is gone, and it's all bite now. "Did you really think that was gonna be me?"

 

 

 

######  _7.19.2002_

He finds her after the fourth mass memorial. It won't be the last — there are still pleas for the missing at every news broadcast, and the cleanup crews are still pulling out body parts — but Steve's put on the same suit every other day for a week now, and for the moment, it's just good to see a familiar face.

Even if said face happens to be black and blue.

She's standing off to one side, stiff and sober, with her hands shoved into her pockets and her chin tucked into the collar of her coat. It's a miracle he even managed to see her through the sea of mourners, all wearing black clothing and bleak expressions, clutching umbrellas that bend under the weight of rain so heavy it seems the city herself is crying. Fitting, given the circumstances.

He ducks through the crowd and comes to rest at her side, and she spots him out of the corner of her eye and shifts to something like parade rest before he can blink.

"Captain."

He nods, all too grateful for the status quo her greeting provides. "Lieutenant."

It takes nearly half an hour for all the names to be read. They spend the rest of the service in silence.

Afterwards, as the crowds disperse, he speaks before she can follow. "Hill, wait a sec."

She raises an eyebrow, the one that isn't bisected by the gash that splits one side of her forehead. There's a livid bruise just starting to yellow across her cheek, a split in her lower lip that's painful just to look at, and a wide scrape curves along her jawline, still angry and red.

"I didn't know you were in the field that day," he says.

"No? What gave it away?" She takes a deep breath, then raises her chin as if presenting the evidence. "I was on the B-Team."

His wince is immediate and involuntary. New York is still standing, thanks to him and the rest of Fury's merry band of misfits, but it'd fallen to someone else to keep the bleeding at bay. He'd been there for the battle, but she'd been there for the aftermath — chaos, confusion, calls from broken bodies buried beneath the rubble.

"Caught the tail end of a building collapse," she says. "Looks worse than it is."

The words are flat and hard, and he traces it all again, fresh flaws on a face that screams military through features that are so fiercely female, and can't help but wonder if that's exactly why none of the wounds are dressed.

She reaches up to tug her collar tighter at her neck, with fingers that are sliced and scratched and tipped with torn nails. She seems to remember just as he takes notice, burying them back in her coat.

"Did you need something, Captain?"

Somewhere in the Triskelion, Banner is locked in a room with no doors. Like the rest of the team, Steve's still not sure what else can be done. But standing here, soaked to the skin, with Hill's battered hands and another hundred names scattered to the wind, he's sure that it's not nearly enough.

He has no clue what he needs, and he can only shake his head and watch her walk away without a word.


End file.
